BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG
We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"

NORTON META TAG

30 September 2014

THERE will be a host of conspiracy theorist, doomsday preppers and right wing fanatics that will seen this case of Ebola in the U.S. as a government plot orchestrated by Obama to wipe out the elderly, the vets, the poor, and to distract from the economic and political problems of the nation and an illegal war in Iraq and Syria. I bet there is already a hot time on the internet tonight. And stupid people will believe some or all of their rants and ramblings and pass them on adding to fear and near panic in some communities. For those who want to know what is actually going on consider these from +NPR and the +PBS NewsHour .....

A patient at the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in
Dallas has a confirmed case of Ebola, the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention says. He is being treated and kept in strict isolation.

LM Otero/AP

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed Tuesday that the first case of Ebola has appeared in the U.S.
A man in Dallas has tested positive for the virus, the agency said.
The man flew to the U.S. from Liberia, arriving on Sept. 20, NPR has
learned. He wasn't sick on the flight, and had no symptoms when he
arrived.

He first developed symptoms on Wednesday, Sept. 24, according to
the CDC, and first sought care on Friday. On Sunday, he was placed in
isolation at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services.
Health
officials have already started reaching out to people who may have come
into close contact with the man. The virus is spread only through
direct contact of bodily fluids, and it isn't contagious until a person
starts showing symptoms.Update at 7:15 p.m. ET. Handful Of People Exposed
A "handful" of people may have been exposed to the virus, the CDC's Director Dr. Tom Frieden said Tuesday at a news conference. These include several family members of the man and a few people in community, Frieden said.
The man could have passed Ebola to these people during the four days when he was sick but not yet isolated.

But passengers on the plane with the man were not exposed to
Ebola, Frieden said. "There is zero risk of transmission on the flight.
He was checked for fever before getting on the flight."
The CDC
has been planning for an Ebola case in the U.S, Frieden said. And the
agency, together with state health departments, has successfully dealt
with similar viruses — Lassa and Marburg — on five previous occasions.
"The
bottom line here is that I have no doubt that we will control this
importation, or case of Ebola," he said, "so that it does not spread
widely in this country."Our Original Post Continues:
This
isn't the first time somebody has been treated for Ebola in the U.S.
Several American aid workers in recent months caught the virus while
working in West Africa and were flown back to the U.S. for treatment.
But
it's the first time the disease has been diagnosed in a person in the
U.S. The CDC is sending a team to Dallas to work with state and local
health officials.

The Ebola epidemic in West Africa continues to grow rapidly. As of
Thursday, there have been more than 6,500 cases across Liberia, Sierra
Leone and Guinea. More than 3,000 people have died of the disease, the
World Health Organization says.
Specialists
studying infectious diseases have predicted for weeks that a few Ebola
cases would likely turn up in the U.S. And hospitals around the country
have been preparing to diagnose and treat such cases.
Because
Ebola only spreads through body fluids, officials say that any case like
this will likely be quickly identified and contained, and not lead to a
widespread outbreak like the one happening now in West Africa.

Watch Tuesday’s CDC news conference discussing the first diagnosed U.S. case of Ebola
The first ever case of Ebola in the U.S. has been diagnosed in Dallas.
Centers for Disease Control Director Tom Frieden confirmed the diagnosis in a news conference Tuesday afternoon.
The
patient, only identified as a male, traveled from Liberia and arrived
in the U.S. on Sept. 20, but did not start showing symptoms until four
days later. The patient was later admitted to Texas Health Presbyterian
Hospital Dallas on Sunday, Sept. 28, and put under isolation and
treatment.
The patient had traveled to Texas to visit family members living in the U.S., Frieden said.
There
was no other information released as to the identity or the status of
his conditon, other than that he was critically ill at this point and
under intensive care.
While all other patients treated for Ebola
have been sent to Emory University in Atlanta, Frieden said there were
no plans to transfer the most-recent patient from the Dallas hospital.
The
CDC, along with Dallas County Health and Human Services, will now
follow procedure for contact tracing in order to identify all possible
persons who may be at risk for Ebola infection because of direct contact
with the Dallas patient.
Since the patient did not start
exhibiting symptoms until four days after flying to the U.S. on a
commercial airliner, Frieden said there was “zero risk of transmission
on the flight.”
“Ebola is a scary disease because of the severity
of the illness,” Frieden said. “At the same time we are stopping it in
its tracks.”

This is how you get Ebola, as explained by science

A
colorized, magnified electron microscope image of the Ebola virus
growing out of an infected VERO 46 cell. Image by National Institute of
Allerfy and Infectious Diseases

This post was originally
published on Aug. 21 and updated on Sep. 30 to reflect the latest
numbers from the World Health Organization.
As of Sep. 30,
the Ebola virus had killed more than 3,000 people in the West African
countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Nigeria, according to the
latest numbers released by the World Health Organization.As
the virus spreads and medical workers feverishly battle to contain it,
we wanted to know, how exactly is this virus transmitted from human to
human?What is Ebola?

Illustrations by Ruth Tam

Ebola is one of the world’s most virulent diseases. It comes from an extended family of viruses called Filoviridae,
which also include the deadly Marburg virus. It is a swift and
effective killer, known to kill up to 90 percent of those it infects.
And it is a “hemorrhagic fever virus,” which means it causes fluid to
leak from blood vessels, resulting in a dangerously low drop in blood
pressure.
Understanding Ebola requires an understanding of viruses
and how they work. “Viruses,” science writer Carl Zimmer writes in his
book “A Planet of Viruses”,
“can replicate themselves, despite their paltry genetic instructions,
by hijacking other forms of life. They… inject their genes and proteins
into a host cell, which they [manipulate] into producing new copies of
the virus. One virus might go into a cell, and within a day, a thousand
viruses [come] out.”
All viruses contain “attachment proteins,”
which, as the name suggests, attach to host cells through the cells’
“receptor sites.” This is how they invade healthy human cells.While
some virus particles are shaped like spheres, the particles that make
up Ebola are filament-like in structure, giving them more surface area
to potentially attack a greater number of cells. Each Ebola virus
particle is covered in a membrane of these attachment proteins, or
glycoproteins.
“[The virus] has a tremendous number of
glycoproteins, which can increase its ability to affect cells,” said
Richard Cummings, chair of Emory’s Dept. of Biochemistry and director of
the National Center for Functional Glycomics. “It’s extremely
infectious in that regard.”
Imagine Ebola’s glycoproteins as giant
oak trees with branches and leaves, said Erica Ollmann Saphire, a
structural biologist at the Scripps Research Institute. The Ebola virus
has its own critical receptor site, which lies beneath these branches
and leaves to avoid detection from the immune system. Each glycoprotein
can attach itself to a host cell in a number of different ways, but once
its branches fasten themselves to a host cell’s molecules, that host
cell pulls in the attachment protein, slicing off its leaves and
branches and exposing the trunk, the virus’s receptor site.
“The
previously hidden receptor rearranges itself and spring loads like a
spear fishing rod,” said Saphire. “It uncoils, springs forward and
penetrates the membrane, driving itself into the cytoplasm.”
The cells then internalize the virus, and Ebola’s race against the human immune system begins.How Ebola moves from person to person
Ebola
spreads through direct contact with infected bodily fluids or tissue.
The virus can be transmitted when an infected person’s vomit, blood or
other fluids contact another person’s mouth, eyes or openings in their
skin, said Dr. Ameesh Mehta, an infectious disease doctor at Emory
University.
Even after a person has died, the virus persists. In
West Africa where funeral rites include washing, touching and kissing
corpses by family members, putting the dead to rest can be just as
deadly as caring for a living patient.
“Contact with any aspect of it is considered very dangerous,” Cummings said. “Any physical contact.”Ebola’s
sucker punch is its speed of replication. At the time of death, a
patient can have 1 billion copies of the virus in one cubic centimeter
of blood. In comparison, HIV, a similar virus, has the same rate at the
time of death. But unlike HIV, which only infects two types of immune
cells, Ebola first infects white blood cells that disable the body’s
ability to destroy foreign substances, then seizes nearly every cell
type.
“It’s a systemic viral infection throughout your body as
opposed to an infection of just your immune system,” Saphire said.
“Patients may die before they’re able to mount much of an immune
response.”
This process takes anywhere from two to 21 days (though
it’s typically between four to 10 days). When the immune system begins
breaking down, the symptoms begin to show.
Patients experience
fevers, headaches and fatigue early on. After the virus overwhelms
healthy cells, they burst, causing a chemical release leading to
inflammation. Their remains are taken over by other cells, perpetuating
the virus. As the symptoms worsen, patients suffer from bloody diarrhea,
severe sore throat, jaundice, vomiting or loss of appetite.
Infected
cells that haven’t yet burst carry the virus through the bloodstream to
invade different parts of the body like the lymph nodes, spleen and
liver. When infected cells attach themselves to the inside of blood
vessels, it weakens them, causing fluids to leak. This triggers the
uncontrollable bleeding for which Ebola is known, though it only happens
for about 50 percent of patients and occurs mostly inside the body.
In
fatal cases, blood pressure plummets after blood vessel damage, and
death from shock or multiple organ failure occurs within six to 16 days.The path ahead
Saphire
is part of a large, multi-site team made up of 25 laboratories that’s
mapping Ebola’s glycoprotein to better understand and defeat the virus.
Among the potential strategies they’re studying is an antibody cocktail
called ZMapp, an experimental drug that drew media attention after its
use on two U.S. aid workers and three Liberian doctors. First developed
by the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases a
decade ago, this “Ebola serum” potentially works to neutralize the virus
by preventing its rearrangement and flagging it for destruction by the
immune system.
Clinical trials for ZMapp are set to begin in 2015,
but according to Saphire, doses for “experimental compassionate
therapy,” treatment provided to critically-ill patients before the drug
has been approved, could be ready in three months.
“The central
dogma of molecular biology is that sequence dictates fold, which
dictates function,” Saphire said. “But Ebola does more with less. While
the human genome has 20,000 kinds of genes, Ebola has seven, and by
rearranging its protein structure, it can carry out far more than seven
functions.”
Ebola,
Saphire explained, remodels its molecules “like a Transformer: those
toys that unfold and refold to change between a robot and a truck,” she
said. “We don’t typically expect molecules in biology to do that. We
expect proteins to have one particular form – just the robot. If you
didn’t know that the Ebola robot would also refold into a truck, you
would design all your drugs against the robot structure.”
In addition, due to its extreme nature, there are far fewer human studies on Ebola than other similar viruses.
“Ebola
patients are often too sick to consent to research,” Mehta said. These
cases are occurring in poor environments where it’s hard to collect the
samples to really understand the pathogens. But hopefully science
catches up with the clinical phenomenon.”
While the recent
outbreak is not expected to reach far beyond West Africa, researchers
like science writer Richard Preston fear the beginning of a more deadly
and longer-lasting epidemic if the virus finds its way to metropolitan
areas like Lagos, Nigeria, which has a population larger than the state
of New York.
Despite Ebola’s pervasive spread, Cummings says the
biggest misconceptions are that Ebola is easily transmitted and that the
outbreak in West Africa could reach global levels.
While one
should still exercise caution, Cummings says the requirement of
transmission of fluids makes the disease more difficult to get if you’re
not directly treating patients.
“It is more controllable than people realize.”

THERE was so much hope for China in the Spring of 1989. Eastern Europe was being liberated from the Soviet Union, glastnost was all the buzz throughout the USSR and now there was a peaceful student lead pro democracy movement gaining support across communist ruled China. And then came the horror of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Will Hong Kong be a repeat of 1989? On thing is certain, the people of Hong Kong can not count on support of the Western capitalist democracies of their struggle for freedom and democracy. And the people of these democracies will feign horror at another bloody crackdown when it happens in Hong Kong, and then they will continue to buy products made in the prc, supporting and funding the very same government that murders it's own people to stay in power. I am sorry the vast majority of us are so self centered and hypocritical that we put our own selfish desire for things over the human rights of others. And I pray I am wrong, and the people of Hong Kong win their struggle and become a beacon of light and hope for the prc and oppressed people the world over. From +Mother Jones .....

Twenty-five
years ago, Chinese leaders violently suppressed a student uprising in
Beijing. These photos document the before and after.

Twenty-five
years ago, the Communist Party leadership of China violently suppressed
student demonstrations in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, killing countless
peaceful protesters. The demonstrations began in April as spontaneous
rallies commemorating the life of Hu Yaobang, a politician whom students
regarded as open-minded and pro-reform. But soon, the protests had
become a nationwide call for increased democratic rights, government
transparency, and freedom of the press. The movement threatened the top
leadership to its core, and during the night of June 3, 1989, and the
morning of June 4, troops cleared the square. These photos trace the
short arc of the demonstrations and their devastating aftermath.

April 21, 1989​: According to official government documents compiled in the Tiananmen Papers,
an exhaustive account of the demonstrations, emotions in the square
reached a "fever pitch" on this day. In this photo, taken on April 21,
people flock around the Monument to the People's Heroes, where, several
days earlier, a group of art students had placed a portrait of their
hero, Hu Yaobang, opposite Mao's portrait (which you can see in the
background). Students representing 10 universities marched on the square
on the day photographed, circulating petitions demanding competitive
elections and political reforms. According to an official government
account, they chanted: "Long live democracy!" and "oppose dictatorship!" (Sadayuki Mikami/AP)

May 1989: Wang Dan, a 20-year-old freshman studying history at Beijing University, rose to prominence in the student occupation of the square, seeming to hold "the greatest influence," according to a New York Times profile filed at the time.
The characters on Wang's headband read "hunger strike," because hunger
strikes were a key element of the protests. After the crackdown, Wang
was one of 21 people the government identified as key leaders of the
protests, and was among those who were rounded up and sent to prison. He
was released in 1993, only to be rearrested in 1995 and sentenced to 11 more years.
Canadian journalist Jan Wong wrote that during his time in prison,
Wang Dan marked each anniversary of the massacre with a 24-hour hunger
strike: "I plan to do so every June 4th for the rest of my life," Wang
said. These days, Wang Dan describes himself as "an incorrigible
idealist" on his Twitter profile. (AP Photo)

May 17, 1989: This photo captures the spirit of the
early protests, which were raucous and attracted broad support from
locals and the media. International coverage of the 1989 events might
lead you to believe the student protests only happened in Beijing. But
on May 17 alone, 27 provinces reported large-scale demonstrations—16 of
which included 10,000 or more protesters, according to the Tiananmen
Papers. The widespread unrest put the pressure on leaders to come up
with a solution, and in the Chinese corridors of power, the embattled
and divided Politburo was reaching the conclusion that martial law was
a necessary step in putting down the protests. (Sadayuki Mikami/AP)

Friday May 19: Zhao Ziyang, the Communist Party
General Secretary who had pioneered market reforms, meets with fasting
students in Beijing to urge them to stop their hunger strike. Zhao, who
had pushed for a more lenient reaction to the protests, was later ousted
from government. "We have come too late," he said to the students that day, in comments broadcast on television.
"I am sorry, fellow students. No matter how you have criticized us, I
think you have the right to do so. We do not come here to ask you to
excuse us." After negotiations with the students failed, Communist Party leaders ordered a troop takeover of Beijing, and People's Liberation Army troops began to occupy Beijing. (Xinhua/AP)

May 21, 1989: University students wave fists and
flags as five Chinese military helicopters fly over Beijing at dawn. The
number of people in the square swelled to some 300,000 on this day.
Reports said that locals pleaded with army officers to resist using
force, and prevented troops on the ground from reaching the square. (AP Photo)

May 22, 1989: A young couple dances among a crowd,
which had been occupying Tiananmen Square for nine days at this point.
What strikes me about this photo is how different the square—and young
peoples' relationship to politics—is today. A generation on, young
Chinese have been deprived of the cultural memory of Tiananmen. Many
young Chinese have never learned about the events around June 4. If they
have heard anything about what is euphemistically called the
"incident," it's often that it was a blip on the radar in the otherwise
unblemished history of Communist rule. Of course, the sanitized version
is far from the truth…Louisa Lim, NPR's Beijing correspondent, calls
today's China The People's Republic of Amnesia.(Mark Avery/AP)

May 30, 1989: Protesters occupying Tiananmen Square
work on the statue of the Goddess of Democracy, a plaster symbol of
resistance and unity modeled after the Statue of Liberty. (Jeff Widener/AP)

June 3, 1989: This photo depicts a moment just
before the government's response to the demonstrations turned violent.
On June 3, huge crowds gathered at a Beijing intersection. The bloody
crackdown was about to begin. This time, the troops had strict orders:
Clear the square. (Jeff Widener/AP)

June 4, 1989: The bodies of dead civilians rest among mangled bicycles near the square. (AP Photo)

June 5, 1989: In eastern Beijing, a Chinese couple on a bicycle take cover at an underpass as tanks roll past overhead. (Liu Heung Shing/AP)

June 5, 1989: "This guy's going to screw up my
picture," Associated Press photographer Jeff Widener thought as a man
appeared in front of four tanks in Tiananmen Square. "I really thought
I'd missed the hoop on that basketball court," Widener told me in a 2009
interview, explaining that he took this photo while leaning over a
balcony of the Beijing Hotel, with all the wrong camera settings,
concussed from a stray rock, and suffering from a cold. "I think about
how close I came to not getting the picture," he added.
Widener was able to smuggle the film out of the hotel with the help
of a young tourist. The next day, he arrived at the AP offices in
Beijing to learn that his photo was on the front pages of the world's
newspapers. Its power only dawned on him later: "It's a bit like David
and Goliath," he said. "It's just so overpowering—it's like an ant
against an elephant."
We still don't know the identity of Tank Man. "Many people would like
to know who he is, and personally, my feeling is is that it's kind of
neat that we don't know who he is, because he's sort of representative
of the unknown soldier," Widener said. This photo is "part of me," he
added. "I'm responsible for telling its story over and over and over
again." (Jeff Widener/AP)

Hong Kong—usually an orderly finance haven—erupted over the weekend
as police used teargas and pepper spray to break up a three-day student
sit-in that occupied the central business district. Thousands of
protesters have deployed umbrellas to protect themselves from the
chemical attack—some people are dubbing it the Umbrella Revolution—and have even picked up the hands-up "don't shoot" gesture from protests in Ferguson, Missouri.
The protests were the culmination of a campaign organized last year
by the student group "Occupy Central," calling for free elections and
more autonomy for Hong Kong, which is controlled by the Communist Party
in Beijing.
At issue are assurances China made to Hong Kong when it took the reins back from Britain in 1997. Under
the so-called "one country, two systems" deal, Hong Kong was allowed to
keep its common-law system and enjoy greater rights than those on the
mainland (where news of the protests has been aggressively censored). By
2017, Hong Kong residents hoped they would be able to elect their own
chief executive—the top representative of their so-called Special
Administrative Region. But now, China appears to be reneging on the
spirit of its deal. President Xi Jinping has firmly rejected open
nominations for candidates, and says they will continue to be vetted by a
central committee in Beijing.
The government's crackdown has been unsuccessful in dispersing the
protesters, who are still out on the streets—and solidarity marches are
taking place in cities around the world, including Ferguson. Here's a wrap-up of photos from the weekend.

Police pepper spray activists who forced their way into the government headquarters on Saturday. Apple Daily/AP

Protesters block a police bus on one of Hong Kong's major thoroughfares. Vicnent Yu/AP

Students are using improvised defenses against teargas and pepper spray. Wong Maye-E/AP